1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an information processing apparatus, a distributed print controlling method, a storing medium and a program, and more particularly, it relates to control effected when printing request from application is performed as distributed print on a plurality of printers, and more specifically, it relates to an information processing apparatus, an information processing method, a storing medium storing a computer-readable program, and such a program, in which operation instruction from an operator with respect to various jobs can positively be executed and the operator can collectively recognize conditions of the respective jobs efficiently.
2. Related Background Art
In conventional techniques, regarding print processing of a document formed by application software using a printing function provided by a general OS (operating system), only print processing is performed for a single printing device in correspondence to one printing instruction, and, when an operator wishes to effect distributed print of the document on a plurality of printing devices, the operator must effect plural printing instructions by designating the number of pages to be distribution-printed with respect to the printing devices to be distributed. In this case, the print processing (output processing of printing instruction with respect to a graphic engine of OS) is effected by means of application by the times corresponding to the number of pages, thereby increasing operator's labor and the processing time of application.
To avoid this, it is considered to propose an arrangement in which, when the distributed print is effected, in consideration of the operator's labor and the print processing time of the application, the printing instruction emitted from the application is spooled and the number of pages is automatically designated to plural printing drivers thereby to emit plural print jobs. In this case, since the processing in which the application outputs the printing instruction may be performed once, the releasing of the application from the print processing is hastened, and, since the distributed print processing can be effected automatically, the operator's labor can be decreased.
In such an arrangement, since the print request is emitted to the plural printer drivers, the plural print jobs are issued. Thus, when display of status of the print jobs and operation of the printing jobs are performed in order that the operator manages the print jobs, the following problems will occur.
First, in spite of the fact that the operator recognizes only one print job, since the plural print jobs corresponding to the number of printing devices to be distributed are issued, the operation and status display of the print jobs cannot be effected as the single distributed print job, and, thus, it is hard to understand for the operator.
Second, when the display of the print jobs is effected so that the operator recognizes the distributed print jobs as the single print job, it is impossible to distinguish print jobs (parent print job and child print job) produced by the distributed print processing from the general single print job.
Third, when the single parent print job to be displayed as the distributed print job and a plurality of child print jobs produced by the distributed print are displayed, in spite of the fact that there is a difference between the different print jobs (parent print job and child print job), the operator cannot easily recognize and perform the operation inherent to the distributed print in the parent print job or the child print job.
Fourth, the distributed print processing always includes original parent print job (or print data), and the original parent print job or a plurality of child print jobs produced by dividing the original parent print job are sent to the printer. However, displays of states of the produced jobs such as a timing for producing the plural child print jobs, a timing for sending the job to the output device, a timing for completing the print processing of the output device and a timing for generating error are not always be synchronized, and there is no means for collectively operating such related jobs and for displaying such jobs efficiently.